


The Art and Science of Being Bad

by apple_pi



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-26
Updated: 2006-03-26
Packaged: 2018-07-28 12:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7640113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apple_pi/pseuds/apple_pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Help me, Crowley,” the angel said. He stood up—he swayed a bit and Crowley swayed sympathetically in his chair—and waved one soft pink hand around. “I want to do something just a little, ehm, wicked.” His eyes were enormous; he looked as wicked as a toddler stalking the family pet. “Not too bad,” he said. “Just a little bad.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art and Science of Being Bad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pippinmctaggart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pippinmctaggart/gifts).



“I think I’m a bit tiddly,” Aziraphale said, placing his glass precisely upon the table. “That’s a charming whisky.”

Crowley nodded hazily. It was a charming whisky; he was chuffed at having remembered it. It wasn’t every demon that could recall with such exactitude a distillation that hadn’t existed anywhere on Earth for three hundred years, give or take. 

“S’good,” he said, and realised that a few minutes must have passed. Enough minutes, anyway, that Aziraphale was looking at him: puzzled and rather fetchingly mussed—hair tousled, tie askew, linen jacket rumpled. “The whisky, I mean,” Crowley clarified, wondering vaguely if tempting humans for all those millennia made one more susceptible to temptation oneself. Rather a moot point, really, considering he’d been pants at temptation—the resisting part of it—since well before the Fall. Crowley looked away, wondering where his sunglasses had got to.

They kept drinking.

 

 

“What do you do when you want to be… wicked?” Aziraphale asked later.

It was probably the same night, Crowley thought. “Wicked?” he said. There’d been that time in the twelfth century, though. “I dunno,” he said. “I invented changing-room lighting when I was drunk, once.” Went on a bender and woke up four years later. That was the twelfth century thing, not the changing-room lighting thing. He looked around for clues as to what year it was. The electricity seemed to be in working order, which was a good sign. Probably the same night, yes.

“Oh, that sounds… interesting,” the angel said. He sounded disappointed; his tie and jacket were gone, and his hair looked almost fashionable, it had become so mussed.

“Why do you ask?” Crowley glared at the bottle between them, then poured another drink once it had refilled.

Aziraphale leaned forward. His eyes gleamed. “I’m completely schnockered,” he said. “I want to be.” He cast his eyes guiltily about, then back at the demon. “ _Bad_ ,” he whispered.

Crowley choked on his mouthful; it took him a moment to remember he could solve the problem if he ceased breathing for a minute, which he promptly did. He spat the extra whisky back into his glass and scowled balefully at the angel. “You should sober yourself up.” He took in another breath; best to keep in the habit.

“You first, my dear,” Aziraphale said cheerfully, and Crowley glared some more.

“Not a chance,” he said. “I’m obviously not as wellied as you. You don’t see me,” Crowley waved his arms about, “going about doing _good_ , now do you? No, you, don’t.” He emphasised the words with pointy jabs across the small table. “I’m fine as I am, happily trousered but not on my way to oblivion.” He stopped and narrowed his eyes; it was a look that had, in the past, caused grown men to wet themselves. “Which you will be, angel.” 

Aziraphale just beamed at him.

Crowley rolled his eyes and tried not to think of how really, really amusing it would be to watch Aziraphale attempt anything even remotely naughty.

“Help me, Crowley,” the angel said. He stood up—he swayed a bit and Crowley swayed sympathetically in his chair—and waved one soft pink hand around. “I want to do something just a little, ehm, wicked.” His eyes were enormous; he looked as wicked as a toddler stalking the family pet. “Not too bad,” he said. “Just a little bad.”

Crowley writhed, internally. Every demonic iota of his being was shouting to help the angel out, lend him a hand. It would be so _satisfying_ , in a professional sort of way. He might even get a commendation. But— “You’d be bad at being bad,” he said.

“I just want to try it,” Aziraphale said. He put his hands on the table and leaned forward, peering into Crowley’s face. His breath smelt of whisky and something else. _Milk and honey_ , Crowley thought bitterly. _Ambrosia_. “I want to know how you feel,” the angel murmured.

Crowley stood and reached out for Aziraphale; with one hand on the angel’s shoulder, he closed his eyes. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and snapped his fingers.

 

They were standing in the centre of the traffic circle in Piccadilly Circus. 

Crowley had his sunglasses back on his face.

It was one a.m.

Throngs of tourists and night-lifers swarmed before them, oblivious to the bone-chilling cold, most of them more trollied than either Crowley or Aziraphale, and Crowley felt the angel inhale sharply as human pheromones and the stench of alcohol washed over them in waves. Happiness and sadness, anger and frustration: everything magnified. Crowley swept his arm across the scene before them.

“Behold,” he said. “One thousand humans; ten thousand chances to make mischief.”

Aziraphale, natty and (mostly) tidy in his light linen suit again, was looking at a gaggle of girls standing beside them, waiting for the light to cross the street. He reached out and touched the nearest woman’s nape, just his hand, laid lightly upon smooth brown skin, below the dark upsweep of her hair and above the ratty faux-fur of her coat collar. She flinched away, turning to glare at him, and he smiled apologetically.

The light changed and she and her friends hurried away. “She was sick,” the angel said. “She didn’t know it yet.”

Crowley hissed. “No,” he said. “That’s not how it works.” He grabbed Aziraphale’s arm and pulled him across the street. “If you’re out to do something wicked, you don’t get to go around curing people’s incipient hangovers.” He tossed a sidewise glance at the angel and smirked. It was not a pleasant smirk. “Yes, I felt you doing that.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “Hangovers always look so wretched,” he said. “It seemed like the right—” He blushed.

Crowley, who hadn’t blushed since some time in the second century, and then only because of a really rather intense Judean sun, snorted, and kept one hand tight on the angel’s elbow. “Sure you don’t want to sober up?” he asked, dragging him up the street, away from the noise and bustle of the square, toward the smaller, darker streets of Soho.

The angel shook his head mutely.

“This is how you’re just a little wicked,” Crowley said. They passed three men sitting on the kerb, warm with drink, chatting amiably; the demon snapped his fingers and a hundred-pound note wafted through the air to settle at their feet. He didn’t stop, though he could hear the three begin to bicker behind them; Aziraphale turned his head to watch as they began pushing one another. 

“You do it like this,” Crowley said; another snap and he pressed a palmful of pills onto two girls, already high, shivering, leaning against the wall outside a club. He jerked Aziraphale’s arm sharply, pulling him to the left, down a narrow alley, darker and dirtier than the rest of the night. 

“Do you want to be wicked?” Crowley asked, stopping suddenly, peering into the angel’s pale face. They stood over a homeless man, outstretched on the dank, freezing pavement, mostly asleep, an empty bottle overturned beside him. “Here’s your chance,” the demon said. One more snap and Aziraphale was looking blankly at a bottle of cheap wine in his hand. “Give it to him,” Crowley said. “Go on. Be bad. Be wicked. Be—” he sneered— “ _me_.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes, then opened them again. He looked at the bottle in his hand, and at the empty bottle by the man’s side. He looked— _looked_ , sunglasses and leather and sneer be damned—at Crowley, and nodded slowly.

He bent, and shook the man’s shoulder.

 

“Whuzzat?” the fellow said, and sat up.

“Here,” Crowley said abruptly, offering what was in his hand. “A gift.” Aziraphale looked at his own hands, empty again, and then Crowley felt his eyes on himself, again.

The man reached out and took the carrier bag of food. Crowley snapped his fingers and the man vanished. “There’s a shelter a few streets away,” he muttered. “I can’t let you. You’ll just have to be content with a lesser sin than murder.”

He pulled Aziraphale to him and kissed him, a rough, sudden pressure of lips against lips, breath mingling with breath, the linen jacket bunched in the demon’s fists and the warm façade of Aziraphale’s almost-human body beneath it, pressed to his own.

Crowley could hear, he thought, all the machinery of Heaven and Hell grinding to a halt.

Aziraphale broke the kiss and backed away; Crowley looked away. He took the sunglasses off and rubbed his eyes. “I hope that’ll do,” he said quietly. 

“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “You should know, sins of the flesh are quite passé in Heaven these days.” There was a shift, a quiet moment of otherness, and the alcohol was gone from Crowley’s bloodstream.

He made a face, gazing down the blank, dark tunnel of the alley. “Why’d you have to go and do that?” he said petulantly. “I was still enjoying that whisky.”

Aziraphale’s hand cupped his cheek, and Crowley found himself looking at the angel, who’d stepped close again. “I did it to us both,” Aziraphale said. “So I could do this.” He kept his hand where it was, curved against Crowley’s jaw and cheekbone, and kissed him again.

Heaven and Hell restarted; Crowley blushed, and kissed the angel back.


End file.
